


Only Just Begun

by belovedmuerto



Series: in a cabin in the woods [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Reunion Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:25:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4623531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve finds Bucky in a cabin in the woods, two years later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Just Begun

**Author's Note:**

> As I lamented over on [tumblr](http://www.belovedmuerto.tumblr.com), I am supposed to be working on finishing the soulmates!AU fic I've been working on for a solid month, or at least starting the necromancer!Bucky AU that is also there taking up space in my head.
> 
> So I wrote this instead. Yanno. As you do.
> 
> It's not beta'd or anything like that, because lazy. Hopefully there are no glaring awful errors. If there are, please be so kind as to ignore them.

There is a huge dog curled up on the porch swing when Steve steps onto the porch. Frankly, he’s not sure how the dog had gotten himself up there. He lifts his head and looks at Steve as he crosses the porch, and Steve diverts from the door to approach him, slowly.

“Hey big guy,” Steve says, holding out his hand as he approaches. The dog sniffs at his hand and gives him a cursory lick, a low woof, before settling back down for his nap, completely uninterested in the intruder.

“His name’s Hooch,” Steve hears, from behind him, and he rises from his crouch to face the owner of the voice.

Bucky is standing in the yard. There are two more dogs with him, sitting at his feet looking at Steve. Well, one of them is looking at Steve, the other keeps turning its head between the smaller dog pressed to its side and Bucky. Both dogs seem wary of him, but then, so does Bucky.

“Hooch?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs, and it’s still the lopsided shrug Steve remembers from before he’d left New York, if not the same lopsided shrug he’d had as a kid. 

“It’s the name he came with.”

Steve nods, and crosses the porch to the steps. He stops there, unsure how to approach, even though it’s Bucky’s porch he’s standing on. It’s Bucky’s door he’s blocking. Bucky takes a few steps forward, slow, the dogs at his heels. They’re very well trained. When Bucky stops, they stop; there’s still several feet between them. It could be the Grand Canyon, the way it feels to Steve.

“You found me,” Bucky says, unnecessary. Obvious. What’s not so obvious is how Bucky feels about that. 

Steve smiles, hopeful. “A couple of my friends are spies.”

Bucky smirks, a little wry. “Natalia, then.”

“Actually, Clint.” Steve shrugs, and Bucky makes a face that says he wasn’t expecting that. He might even be marginally impressed. It’s still hard to tell sometimes. Steve hates that; he used to be able to read Bucky like an open book. Bucky doesn’t let him do that as much, now. Or at least, he didn’t, before he left. 

“You weren’t really hiding though, were you?” Steve adds.

“Not from you.”

Steve smiles down at him. For a while they just look at each other. Steve feels as though he’s drinking Bucky in. He looks good. Healthy. Happier than Steve has seen him in a really long time. Probably since the early forties. Or, jesus, earlier than that. 

Bucky is looking up at him, smiling, soft around the edges. His hair is still long, falling out of a messy tail at the back of his head, the wisps curling a little around his face. He’s wearing short sleeves, his cybernetic arm on full display. Anyone could happen by and see it, see him. He’s standing at the bottom of the stairs smiling up at Steve, completely at ease, completely relaxed except for the very finest hint of… something. Excitement, perhaps? Relief?

They’re very nearly in the middle of nowhere, though. There’s no one to see them, to see Bucky. The only people around are the two of them, the only other creatures the dogs and whatever fauna is in the woods surrounding the cabin on whose porch Steve is still standing. Bucky would pick a cabin in the mountains in the woods to live.

Well, he wouldn’t. Bucky wouldn’t at all, at least not in Steve’s experience of him (which, he’s willing to admit is far shorter than it feels to him). They’re both city kids, through and through. Steve wouldn’t have ever thought Bucky would move to the mountains of western Maryland, but here he is, here they are, outside of Thurmont, standing on Bucky’s porch.

It’s Bucky who moves first, coming up the three steps and pressing a kiss to Steve’s lips, hard and chaste and over before Steve’s even registered that it’s happened. 

It’s good, though.

“C’mon, I’ll show you the house,” Bucky says. “Daisy, Sweetpea, stay out here with Hooch.”

The two dogs at his feet trot down the length of the porch and fit themselves in around the big mastiff on the swing. It creaks back and forth a little, and Hooch lifts his head to look at them. Both Steve and Bucky watch for a moment as the dogs all settle themselves together.

“Daisy’s blind,” Bucky says, soft, almost to himself, looking at his dogs fondly. “Sweetpea is her seeing eye dog. She’s a smart one. Daisy’s… she’s been through some shit, yanno?” 

At that, he looks at Steve, and Steve looks at the pit bull, with her notched ears and her big smile, cuddled up with the other two dogs and happy, safe here with Bucky, and he wants that for himself so badly for a moment he feels incandescent with it.

“Yeah,” he replies. “I get that.”

Bucky nods and goes into the house. The front door is unlocked. Steve doesn’t know if that means that Bucky feels safe here, or if it’s something more practical than that; maybe it’s just that Bucky knows a locked door won’t stop the sort of people who’d come after him, and he knows that his only safety comes through protecting himself.

The cabin is pretty clearly in the middle of being completely renovated, while at the same time being lived in. It’s a mess. Bucky goes into the large front room first. There’s not much there besides a long, low couch, striped and ugly as sin. It looks unbearably comfortable. In front of it there’s a small coffee table with a tv on it, a couple of devices, what looks like a blu ray player and a Wii. Bucky had gotten real fond of Wii when he’d still been in the Tower with Steve, before he’d left.

There are supplies piled in the corners, paint and sheets and wood, a toolbox. Bucky gestures at the whole room.

“Living room,” he says. “Eventually. Mostly I just watch Netflix.”

“You have internet?”

“Yeah, it’s surprisingly good up here. I think the satellites go right overhead or something.”

“You got a Netflix account?”

Bucky looks at him, puzzled. “No, I still use yours. You gave me my own queue, remember?”

“Oh,” and Steve doesn’t really know what to do with that. Bucky has been so close, all this time, and Steve had never known. He’d never looked at Bucky’s queue after he’d left, but he’d kept using it. Somehow, that makes Steve feel better.

He gestures at the couch. “It reminds me--”

“Of that couch we had back in our first place? Yeah, that’s why I bought it. It’s hideous, but it’s comfortable. Pretty sure no one’s ever died on this one, though.”

“Buck, no one ever died on our old couch.”

“Sure smelled like it, though.”

Steve laughs, and Bucky’s face turns sad for a moment, before he speaks again. “Two years, Steve?” 

Steve sighs and looks at his feet, because he knew this would come up. He knew it had to. “You said you needed time, Buck. I wanted to respect that.”

“Two years?” And the hurt has bled through, into his voice. Steve had hurt him, and it hurts him, knowing that. 

“I guess-- I guess I needed some time, too. You didn’t come back.” It doesn’t come out accusatory, thankfully. It’s not meant to be. They’ve both hurt each other.

Bucky nods, and takes a deep breath, and then shrugs. “I don’t think I want that life, Steve. I need the war to be over. I don’t think it’ll ever be over for you, Stevie, will it? You need that. I understand that. I don’t like it, but I understand it. I’m sorry.”

Steve shrugs. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Bucky looks at him for a moment, searching, and then nods again. “Come see the kitchen.”

Steve follows him into the kitchen, which is clearly finished. It’s small and simple, and beautiful. There are clean dishes in the rack next to the sink. 

“You did all this yourself?”

“Well, I don’t have a whole lot else to do. I got some help with the plumbing, but I did the other stuff.”

Steve leans against the counter and looks around. “You made the cabinets?” 

“Yup.” 

“They look nice, Buck.”

“Thanks. Took forever.”

\----

They end up fucking on the kitchen floor. One minute, Steve is leaning against the counter, hands braced at his sides, while Bucky just _looks_ at him, not even trying to keep up the conversation, a devastating look, a _flaying_ look. And Steve feels flayed open, completely exposed under Bucky’s gaze; he wants to squirm, he wants to writhe, but this is what he came here for, he came to lay himself open at Bucky’s feet, to make of himself a sacrifice if need be.

The next moment Bucky is stalking across the kitchen towards him, getting in his space, and his eyes have gone predatory, and Steve lets his own eyes fall shut just before Bucky kisses him, again.

This time it isn’t chaste. Nowhere near it. 

Things go a little blurry after that, and though Steve remembers it with the same perfect clarity he remembers everything else, he sees it in flashes. Kissing Bucky back, like he’s a lifeline, like he is life itself. Sinking his hands into Bucky’s hair, tangling his fingers in it. Ending up on the floor, his t-shirt and Bucky’s both gone somewhere, Bucky’s hands on his bare ass, urging him on, harder. He’s going to have hand shaped bruises there, and he hopes they last longer than bruises normally do. He wants to be branded, be owned. They’re both moaning into the space between their mouths, when they’re not actively kissing, deep and filthy like neither of them requires air. 

Steve’s fingers are still in Bucky’s hair, and he uses his grip to turn Bucky’s head, just enough so that he can get at his jaw, at his neck, and he tucks his face there, at the crook of neck and shoulder and moans, moans as he rolls his hips against Bucky’s.

“Stevie,” Bucky gasps, hands still on Steve’s ass, head thrown back. “Stevie, ah--” 

Steve keeps rolling his hips, rutting, incapable of speech at all, incapable of much other than moaning and chasing his own orgasm, trying to bring Bucky along with him.

When the fuzziness of it all clears, when he starts remembering in a linear fashion again instead of in flashes of color and intense emotion, when he’s no longer too blissed out by orgasm and Bucky’s proximity to think straight, his hands are still tangled in Bucky’s hair, and Bucky’s panting beneath him, eyes shut, lashes soft against his cheeks, a faint smile curling the corners of his lips, and his arms are around Steve’s waist, holding him close, and Steve just wants to go back to kissing him and never stop. Ever. 

Slowly, Steve moves his fingers, and they get stuck. Bucky turns his head and then winces when it pulls his hair, and then he’s laughing, and Steve laughs with him, dropping his head down against Bucky’s shoulder. They laugh and shake against each other for long minutes, and it relieves the rest of the tension the sex had mostly taken care of. It eases things between them, laying there mostly naked on Bucky’s kitchen floor, come smeared between them, laughing against each other.

Eventually, Steve sobers, and slowly untangles his fingers from Bucky’s hair, moves so he’s not on top of Bucky anymore. Bucky sits up, grabs his t-shirt from where it was flung, cleans himself off and tugs at his sweatpants until they’re back on his hips. He hands Steve the shirt and he follows suit, tugging his boxers and jeans back over his hips but not buttoning them. 

They sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder in Bucky’s kitchen. 

“The tilework is really nice,” Steve says, after a while.

Bucky laughs again, a free, happy, joyful sound, and it breaks Steve’s heart to hear it. Because Bucky is happy here, on his own in the woods with his dogs. 

When he looks up again, Bucky is looking at him, a considering look. A compassionate look, like he understands that Steve understands now, why he’d had to leave. At least, that’s how it looks to Steve.

“Come on,” Bucky says, pushing himself to his feet. “I’ll show you the bathroom, you can clean up.”

Steve understands the layout of the cabin once they’ve gone into the bedroom and Bucky has shown him the half-finished bathroom. It has a functioning shower, at least.

“I was gonna do the tile this weekend,” Bucky says as he’s pulling out a towel for Steve, grabbing a second pair of sweats and a t-shirt from the bedroom and handing them all to Steve. “Go ahead and shower, you smell like the road.”

“I brought the bike,” Steve says, unnecessary. 

Bucky gives him a look. “Yeah, I got that.” But he smiles to soften his words, and Steve can’t help but smile back at him as he takes the towel and clothes from him. 

Bucky joins him in the shower. It’s not really big enough for both of them, but they make do.

\----

Steve is careful not to completely tangle his fingers in Bucky’s hair again, when it’s drying, later, when they’re in Bucky’s huge bed. It’s much later in the day, and the sun is going down, filling the room with golden-purple light through the big windows, overlooking the small yard behind the house. The dogs have been let in and fed and are curled up in various spots around the room, on various pillows. 

Steve is dozing, his arm around Bucky, who is snuggled into his side with his head on Steve’s shoulder, when Bucky speaks.

“Steve,” he says.

“Yeah?” Steve mumbles. 

“I’m really glad you’re here, but I don’t know what you want.” It sounds like a confession, like Bucky is terrified.

Steve lifts his head, and he slides his fingers into Bucky’s hair, and waits until Bucky lifts his head and looks at him. Bucky looks scared, but his gaze is fierce and determined, and it hits Steve for about the forty seventh time since he set out for Maryland and Bucky just how much he loves this man, despite the two years spent apart, despite the hurt they’ve caused each other. Maybe partially because of it. Who knows? It doesn’t matter, not really. 

“Can I stay?” Steve replies, and it comes out pleading, like he’s begging. 

Bucky blinks at him for a moment, and then rolls away. He gets out of bed and pulls on his sweats, and then gestures at Steve. 

“C’mon, I’ve got to show you something before the light’s gone.”

Steve doesn’t know what it means, but he gets up and slips into his boxers and follows Bucky across the room. He lets himself hope, when Bucky grabs his hand to lead him on.

There’s a door there, Steve had thought it was a closet, but it’s actually a staircase, and he follows Bucky up into the attic that he hadn’t even known was above them.

The space runs the whole length of the house, and it is filled with the golden light of sunset and softly deepening shadows. It’s mostly bare, almost totally empty but for the easel under one of the many skylights that are letting in that glow, and a couple of chairs in the corner.

Steve steps around Bucky and further into the room, looking around, letting go of his hand only when Bucky doesn’t follow him into the room. Bucky stays by the stairs, watching. It’s a gorgeous room, and obviously completely finished; the floors have been redone and there is still a faint smell of paint. It’s a studio. When he looks back, Bucky is smiling at him. 

“I was hoping you wouldn’t mind if I set up something like an office, in one corner? We can get a table for you, whatever you need,” Bucky says, and he sounds nervous. Unsure of himself. 

Steve crosses the room and presses a kiss to Bucky’s lips, hard and chaste before it becomes soft and imploring, before Bucky’s hands rise to his wrists, just under where Steve’s hands are against Bucky’s face, holding him close and pouring his whole heart into Bucky’s mouth.

“So that’s a yes?” Steve asks, when they finally break apart.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I mention [tumblr](http://www.belovedmuerto.tumblr.com)?


End file.
